Gender studies in the Czech Republic: Institutionalisation meets neo-liberalism contingent on geopolitics

Abstract

In the article, I focus on some of the intersections of geopolitical location and the position of gender studies as a discipline in the Czech Republic. The first section depicts the functioning of the higher education and research systems in the Czech Republic and the establishment of gender studies and its institutionalisation. The second section then looks at the intersection of geopolitics and neo-liberalism and how it affects local gender studies. Based on 27 semi-structured interviews with scholars and activists, and observations and practice as a gender studies researcher at the Centre for Gender and Science, I explore how a specific geopolitical setting impacts the field of gender studies and scholars navigating it. I argue that gender studies as a discipline has profited from the massification of higher education, which many see as part of neo-liberal higher education reforms. At the same time, research into gender-related issues has been assisted by the incorporation of gender, e.g. in the European Research Area and in other EU policies. This positioning of gender studies is at least partly problematic as it both strengthens the local focus on institutionalised (rather than grassroots) activities and may undermine the perceived local relevance of the discipline that resonates with early post-1989 anti-feminist discourse that has not been effectively challenged so far.